Can Florida Homeowners Shoot Looters Who Break Into Their Houses (as Ron DeSantis Mentioned) or Businesses?

"I've seen signs in different people's yards in the past after these disasters, ... 'You loot, we shoot.' ... You never know what's behind that door."

The Volokh Conspiracy

Mostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent

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EUGENE VOLOKH | 8.30.2023 

The "we" here refers to homeowners; here's a longer text snippet, from Fox News:

I'd also just remind potential looters that you never know what you're walking into. People have a right to defend their property. This part of Florida, you got a lot of advocates and proponents of the Second Amendment. I've seen signs in different people's yards in the past after these disasters, and I would say it's probably here, "You loot, we shoot."

You never know what's behind that door if you go break into somebody's house.

Are homeowners allowed to shoot people who break into their homes, apparently to loot? Yes, under Florida law, and the law of many (though not all) states. The relevant Florida statute provides,

A person is justified in using or threatening to use deadly force if he or she reasonably believes that using or threatening to use such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony.

And "forcible felony" is defined as (emphasis added)

treason; murder; manslaughter; sexual battery; carjacking; home-invasion robbery; robbery; burglary; arson; kidnapping; aggravated assault; aggravated battery; aggravated stalking; aircraft piracy; unlawful throwing, placing, or discharging of a destructive device or bomb; and any other felony which involves the use or threat of physical force or violence against any individual.

Burglary in turn includes "Entering a dwelling, a structure, or a conveyance with the intent to commit an offense therein, unless the premises are at the time open to the public or the defendant is licensed or invited to enter …." If you reasonably believe that someone is entering your Florida home to commit an offense (such as theft), you are legally allowed to use deadly force to prevent that. Indeed, you are legally allowed to do the same with regard to your Florida business (when it's not open to the general public), since burglary isn't limited to residential burglary.

The matter varies from state to state. In all, you can generally use deadly force when you reasonably believe it necessary to prevent death, serious bodily injury, or rape (and generally kidnapping) but states differ as to robbery, burglary, and the like. (I have more on that below.) But in Florida you can indeed use deadly force to stop burglary.

Note that this doesn't have to do with the "stand your ground" vs. "duty to retreat" debate. The "duty to retreat" rule, which is the law in about 1/4 of the states, is that, when you can avoid the threat with complete safety by leaving the place you lawfully are (outside your own home), you aren't allowed to stay and use deadly force to combat the threat. The "stand your ground" rule, which is the law in about 3/4 of the states, is that in such situations you may stay and use deadly force. Here, the defenders are generally in their homes, and they can't avoid the threat (here, of burglary) by leaving, so both rules would yield the same result. The question I'm discussing here is what kind of threat justifies deadly force (threat of burglary suffices in Florida but not in some other states), a separate question from the question of what you may do if you can avoid that threat with perfect safety.

[* * *]

Here's a summary of the bigger picture question of when people are allowed to use deadly force to defend property, throughout the U.S., borrowed from a 2020 post of mine on the subject:

I touched on this briefly in my looting/shooting post, but I thought I'd elaborate a bit more (especially since the commenters seemed to be interested in both the legal and moral aspects of this question). Note that this is, as usual, not specific legal advice, but just a general layout of how various American courts deal with the matter; many of the rules, as you'll see, vary sharply among states, and often turn on specific factual details. (I say "you" below for clarity and convenience—I hope none of you has to actually do any of this.)

[1.] In all states, you can use deadly force to defend yourself against death, serious bodily injury (which can include broken bones and perhaps even lost teeth), rape, or kidnapping, so long as (a) your fear is reasonable and (b) the danger is imminent (requirements that also apply to the doctrines I discuss below). For instance, you should be able to use deadly force against someone who is trying to burn down your home, since that threatens you with death or serious bodily harm. You should be able to do the same against someone who is trying to burn down your business, though with possible limitations involving the duty to retreat in the minority of states that recognize such a duty.

But in nearly all states, you can't generally use deadly force merely to defend your property. (Texas appears to be an exception, allowing use of deadly force when there's no other way to protect or recapture property even in situations involving simple theft or criminal mischief, though only at night,  Tex. Penal Code § 9.42; see, e.g., McFadden v. State (Tex. Ct. App. 2018).) That's where we get the conventional formulation that you can't use deadly force just to defend property.

[2.] This conventional formulation, though, omits an important limitation: In basically all states, you can use nondeadly force to defend your property—and if the thief or vandal responds by threatening you with death or great bodily harm, you can then protect yourself with deadly force. So in practice, you can use deadly force to protect property after all, if you're willing to use nondeadly force first and expose yourself to increased risk.

And in some states, you don't even need to expose yourself to such increased risk, if you reasonably fear at the outset that nondeadly protection of property would be too dangerous. In those states, to quote the Model Penal Code formulation (which some have adopted), deadly force can be used if

the person against whom the force is used is attempting to commit or consummate arson, burglary, robbery or other felonious theft or property destruction and either:

[a] has employed or threatened deadly force against or in the presence of the actor; or

[b] the use of [nondeadly] force to prevent the commission or the consummation of the crime would expose the actor or another in his presence to substantial danger of serious bodily injury.

Note the requirement, in at least this version, of felonious theft or property destruction.

[3.] And that's just for garden-variety theft and property damage. When the theft or vandalism is aggravated in certain ways, many states allow for still more deadly force.

[A.] In about half the states you can use deadly force against robbery, which generally includes any theft from the person that uses modest force or a threat: "Even a purse snatching can constitute a robbery if the victim simply resists the effort to wrest the purse away." Some robbery of course does also create a reasonable fear of death or serious bodily injury, but in these states such a fear is not required.

[B.] In some states, there is a rebuttable presumption that you reasonably fear death or great bodily harm—and may thus use deadly force—if the target is (to quote the Iowa statute),

Unlawfully entering by force or stealth the dwelling, place of business or employment, or occupied vehicle of the person using force, or has unlawfully entered by force or stealth and remains within the dwelling, place of business or employment, or occupied vehicle of the person using force.

This is just a presumption, but to rebut it the prosecution would generally have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you didn't actually reasonably fear death or great bodily harm in such a situation.

[C.] And in some states, it is categorically permissible to use deadly force against burglary—often defined as entering a building illegally with the intent to commit a crime (including theft) there—or against arson, even when you have no reasonable fear of death or serious bodily injury to yourself. For instance, here is one of the New York criminal jury instructions, which generally summarize several relevant New York statutes (brackets in the following text are in the original, and indicate text that is included if the facts of the case fit it):

Under our law, a person in possession or control of [or licensed or privileged to be in] a dwelling [or an occupied building], who reasonably believes that another individual is committing or attempting to commit a burglary of such dwelling [or occupied building], may use deadly physical force upon that individual when he or she reasonably believes such to be necessary to prevent or terminate the commission or attempted commission of such burglary….

A person commits BURGLARY when that person knowingly enters or remains unlawfully in a dwelling [or occupied building] with the intent to commit a crime therein.

Note that building includes "any structure, vehicle or watercraft used for overnight lodging of persons, or used by persons for carrying on business therein," and there's also a similar instruction as to deadly force to prevent arson, which is not limited to burning of occupied buildings.

All this, of course, is just the tip of the iceberg: There are various limitation to these rules (e.g., if you're actually the initial aggressor, or if you know there's a good-faith dispute about the ownership of the property), and I'll note again that the rules and their interpretation can vary sharply from state to state.But this is the big picture, which I think helps show the complexity of this area of the law.

EUGENE VOLOKH is the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA. Naturally, his posts here (like the opinions of the other bloggers) are his own, and not endorsed by any educational institution.

Sustainable Development Goals

Re-thinking and Revitalizing SDG Financing

Photo Credit: Parradee Kietsirikul

STORY HIGHLIGHTS


Delays in implementing the Paris Agreement on climate change and 2030 Agenda increasingly appear to come partly from unmet financing needs as well as the inability and unwillingness of the G20 to move away from fossil fuel subsidies.

The current state of play reflects the international financial architecture’s failure to channel resources to the world’s most vulnerable economies at the necessary scale and speed.

A study by IDOS, IDDRI, and SEI finds effective SDG financing is possible when four main conditions are met.

By Damien Barchiche, Ivonne Lobos, Niels Keijzer, George Marbuah, and Elise Dufief

The many tumultuous events that the world has faced since the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the sheer challenge of the transformative changes it foresees underline that no country can finance the SDGs and other development agendas by freeing up more financial resources alone. Instead of such ‘business-as-usual’ efforts, systemic changes are needed in public and private finance towards achievement of the SDGs.

Delays in implementing the Paris Agreement on climate change and 2030 Agenda increasingly appear to come partly from unmet financing needs as well as the inability and unwillingness of the Group of 20 (G20) to move away from fossil fuel subsidies. The current state of play reflects the international financial architecture’s failure to channel resources to the world’s most vulnerable economies at the necessary scale and speed.

For the UN Secretary-General, this failure poses a growing and systemic threat to the multilateral system itself, as it leads to increased disparities, geo-economic fragmentation, and geopolitical divides across the globe. At the beginning of 2023, UNDP reports, 52 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), representing more than 40% of the world’s poorest population, were either in debt distress or at high risk of debt distress, and 25 of these countries have external debt service repayments in excess of 20% of their total revenues.

To enable developing countries to deliver on the SDGs, the Secretary-General has called for an SDG Stimulus: an additional USD 500 billion per year to be delivered through a combination of concessional and non-concessional finance. The plan calls for the international community and multilateral development banks (MDBs) in particular to significantly scale up funding for global public goods, and for countries to align all forms of finance with the SDGs, including by utilizing Integrated National Financing Frameworks (INFFs).

As part of an effort to elevate the debate on financing the SDGs in developing countries, IDOS, IDDRI, and SEI have joined forces to conduct a study that enables better analysis of concrete challenges to address SDG financing in developing economies. The study focuses on the global picture and analyzes the state of play, recent initiatives, and prospects for financing the SDGs in Ghana, Indonesia, Mexico, and Senegal. We seek to answer the following question: how and under what conditions can partner countries further align their development plans and policies with the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs to better finance their objectives? As the UN Secretary-General states, more money needs to be made available globally for vulnerable countries, which is one of the key challenges today. However, it is also important to support countries in their ability to express their needs for investments for sustainable development, so that the money flows and is attracted to the right investments. The study’s main conclusion is that this alignment and effective SDG financing are possible when four main conditions are met.

Condition number one: Avoiding SDG-incompatible finance. While SDG financing gaps need to be considered and addressed, it should not be forgotten that for many countries – notably Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and BRICS (Brazil, the Russian Federation, India, China, and South Africa) states – realizing the 2030 Agenda is just as much about financing less as it is about financing more. Examples include less financing for approaches that compromise specific SDGs (e.g., fossil fuel subsidies) and making difficult policy decisions that require short-term costs to achieve long-term sustainability gains.

Condition number two: Long-term financing needs to be combined with long-term planning. Development financing strategies, operationalized through the INFFs or other frameworks, provide public and private investors with clarity and predictability. This allows key actors to better grasp the sequence of investments across relief, recovery, and long-term structural transformation. If conducted in an integrated manner, such financing strategies could allow for easier and more affordable access to financing by countries. Planning efforts should also seek to avoid lock-in situations and path dependencies where short-term recovery expenditure could hamper long-term goals of reducing inequalities or advancing environmental protection, and even increase vulnerabilities.

Condition number three: Governments, MDBs, the private sector, and other actors need a better understanding of the cost and benefits of SDG financing at country level. A clear understanding of allocation and spending on public services and public investments that contribute to the SDGs can provide information to identify the scale of funding shortfalls for the SDGs. When calculating costs, double-counting investment needs should be avoided while the identification of synergies between different types of investment should be prioritized. In view of the competing short-term claims on public budgets as witnessed in recent years, including COVID-19-related costs as well as public debt challenges, the benefits of SDG financing will also have to be concretized to justify and defend the long-term investments made. Ghana, Indonesia, Mexico, and Senegal all have a wealth of plans and strategies related to financing sustainable development. These should not be added to but rather finetuned and further operationalized where appropriate. Further progress can be made in connecting those plans to develop detailed and targeted financing plans to support their development objectives.

Condition number four: SDG financing instruments – and international support for these – need to be fully aligned with the country’s needs and priorities. The various tools developed for SDG budgeting, be it the development of INFFs or SDG bonds, can help improve access to and impact of funding and lead to better implementation to achieve the Goals, but only if developed in support of country-owned processes. In practice, they can be the cornerstone of strengthening financing for the SDGs in countries and establish more coherent links between the SDGs and development strategies, as well as their implementation. However, the case studies demonstrated, these tools only prove relevant if they do not add complexity to the administration but are well integrated into and supportive of existing national processes. To achieve this, they should also be sufficiently concretized and operational through dedicated targets and quantifiable indicators. One of the shared challenges across countries is to link these tools together according to local needs, to reinforce and consolidate national or local strategies for financing the SDGs. International partners should fully recognize, follow, and align to such national strategies in their dialogue with governments on international support to national SDG financing efforts.

Way forward

To internationalize and guarantee these four conditions, it is critical that financing stakeholders and governments acknowledge the nature of the situation and the urgency to act. This requires that they acknowledge that the current international architecture is failing to fulfil its essential mission to support stable long-term financing for the SDGs. International actors should further support fundamental reforms and redesign of the international financing system, particularly by providing ways to secure long-term financing.

The 2023 Global Summit of Public Development Banks and the SDG Summit, both taking place in September, the IMF-World Bank annual meetings in October, as well as the 2024 G20 Summit in Brazil, are crucial platforms to discuss and further the design of key financial institutions in a manner that supports effective change at country level. We hope that leaders participating in these meetings will advance concrete and ambitious commitments and agreements in this regard.

* * *

This article was written by:Damien Barchiche, Director, Sustainable Development Governance Programme, Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI);
Ivonne Lobos, Senior Expert, Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI);
Niels Keijzer, Project Lead and Senior Researcher, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS);
George Marbuah, Research Fellow, SEI; and
Elise Dufief, Research Fellow

How a vote to empower autonomous ‘robotaxis’ from Cruise and Waymo has divided San Francisco


As the issue exposes deep divides on safety, ethics, environmentalism, and the footprint of Big Tech in the city, Josh Marcus takes a ride in a driverless vehicle

Friday 11 August 2023 

(Cruise/Getty)

The future was waiting outside my door, and it was an electric taxi named Saxophone.

On Wednesday, 9 August, on the eve of a much-watched vote to expand the footprint of autonomous vehicles (AV) in San Francisco, I summoned a driverless taxi from the company Cruise for a test drive.

The Cruise AVs, which began operating paid, Uber-like on-demand rides in June of 2022, are a frequent sight in my San Francisco neighbourhood, the Richmond. And they’re about to get even more ubiquitous: on Thursday evening, following a marathon seven-hour public comment session, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) voted 3-1 to allow Cruise and Google parent company Alphabet’s Waymo venture to run paid rides, without a safety driver in the cabin, 24/7 on San Francisco streets.

Much like the members of the public who turned out in droves to comment on the vote, I have mixed feelings about autonomous vehicles. I’ve been trailed, somewhat ominously, on backstreets by a Cruise AV as I rode my bike, with the robo-driver declining to pass me like most human pilots would. I’ve seen a homeless man approach the window of a robotaxi to ask for change, only to find no one inside, a metaphor of San Francisco inequality a bit too on the nose even for a writer like me.

I decided, for the time being, to leave the public debating to the local officials and longtime San Francisco residents and start with the basics: what was it like to ride in one of these things?

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For a 0.8 mile, one-way ride to the local grocery store, I was charged $8.26, about a dollar per minute of driving time. The ride was smooth, though the Cruise AV would occasionally move in a way that was, while perfectly safe, not quite human, gliding without hesitation within inches of a parked SUV’s bike rack, hesitating ever-so-slightly within the normally smooth arc of a turn, accelerating with an almost imperceptible stutter after it dropped me off.

Still, I was lucky. Earlier this month, an NBC reporter taking a test drive was stuck inside a Cruise that mysteriously stalled, then blocked two lanes of traffic as it idled at a 45 degree angle against the median.

After I got home, driven by “Flora,” I looked it up and the price of my roundtrip was virtually identical to that of an Uber. I sat there thinking about the strange economics of 2023 San Francisco, where the product of billions of dollars of investment had delivered a service that was both an incredible technical leap, the stuff of the Jetsons, that also offered me no financial advantage, snatched a job from a rideshare driver, and took me on a round trip that would’ve been 15 minutes faster – and free – on a rusty old bike. The future had arrived, but was it one that I, or San Francisco, really wanted, let alone needed?


Wednesday’s vote exposed how deeply divisive such technologies are in San Francisco, and the thorny considerations inherent in any attempt to carry out large-scale changes to the transit system. Human drivers are unsafe death machines themselves, killing thousands of people each year. And the need for green mass transit has never been higher. But are autonomous vehicles the best solution?

The companies, at least, celebrated the decision as heralding a moment of great progress.

“Offering a commercial, 24/7 driverless ridehail service across San Francisco is a historic industry milestone – putting Cruise in a position to compete with traditional ridehail, and challenge an unsafe, inaccessible transportation status quo,” Prashanthi Raman of Cruise said in a statement to The Independent.


It was indeed major victory for the industry, though regulators warn there’s still much work to be done before autonomous vehicles flood the roads.

“The conversation on how best to integrate AVs into our community is far from over,” said CPUC president Alice Busching Reynolds, who voted for the expansion.


One commissioner, Genevieve Shiroma, wasn’t yet convinced, and argued the industry hasn’t given good enough data and has been too quick to brush off reports of driverless vehicles behaving strangely around first responders.

“Imagine if one of those so-called anecdotes involved a member of your family in need of urgent medical attention, or was trapped in a burning building,” she said, adding, “All it takes is one real-life example.”

Outside of the Public Utilities Commission building, protesters rallied and drew messages like ‘people not profits’ in chalk on the sidewalk, as AV company employees showed out in matching t-shirts.

Locals accuse driverless cars of stalling traffic
(Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Inside, commissioners heard a mosaic of different opinions.

“We are in desperate need of people coming to San Francisco,” Matthew Sutter, who has been driving a taxi cab for 31 years, told the commission. “You’re going to take away jobs with this thing.”

Meanwhile, a man named Michael Martinez said expanding Cruise and Waymo’s footprint in San Francisco would mean the city, already one of the most expensive and unequal places to live in America, was “pimped out by yet another couple of large tech companies so that all their employees here wearing yellow shirts might get to cash out their stock options.”

Numerous advocates pointed out how driverless cars could discriminate against disabled people, given that they sometimes drop people a few doors down from their chosen destination, and they don’t have drivers who are able to help people with wheelchairs or other mobility aides enter or exit a vehicle. A taxi driver can help someone carry their groceries to a front door, but an AV can only go from place to place.

Others argued the technologies would in fact help disabled people, overcoming the “last mile problem” of public transit, when passengers aren’t able to get all the way to their destination, and that AVs would limit dangerous human errors like distracted driving.

“Too often, patients don’t make it to my operating room because they have been killed by distracted drivers or road rage,” an orthopedic surgeon testified.

A representative for Mothers Against Drunk Driving said Cruise and Waymo could be a “pillar” of stopping the “100 per cent preventable crimes” of drunk driving deaths.

City safety officials have argued against expansion of AV taxi service
(Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Robotaxis began operating paid taxi services in San Francisco in June of 2022, and since then, hundreds of Cruise and Waymo vehicles have filled the streets. The city, synonymous with Silicon Valley technology and innovation, is seen as the most important test yet of AV technology, a high-profile audition for a future of mass, autonomous transit.

“Operating robotaxis in SF has become a litmus test for business viability,” Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt wrote on X in April. “If it can work here, there’s little doubt it can work just about everywhere.”

So far, the experience has been mixed, with a fleet of up to 400 autonomous taxis at a time carrying out thousands of successful rides – and enraging some local residents and city officials, who say the robotaxis carry out bizarre and unsafe behaviour on a regular basis with little accountability.

On 21 January, for example, San Francisco firefighters were battling a blaze on Hayes Street when they saw a driverless taxi from Cruise gliding towards them. The Cruise vehicle, a modified electric Chevrolet Bolt, was heading straight for their hoses.

The firefighters made attempts to stop the vehicle, but couldn’t. First responders were only able to halt the car once they shattered its window, according to a letter from city officials.

Local transit activists say Cruise and Waymo vehicles can be seen creeping creepily towards pedestrians on sidewalks, blocking buses, and getting in the way of first responders.

“I’ve seen them not totally stop at a stop sign,” an activist with the local transit group Safe Street Rebel, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Independent. “I’ve seen them get too close to pedestrians. I personally have felt very unsafe crossing the road whenever there is one stopped. I see them stalled on the streets, too. I just saw that the other day one stalled, blocking an emergency vehicle. This is something that they just do on their own.”

The group has carried “cone-ing” protests, placing traffic cones on top of empty AVs to temporarily stall them.

According to data Cruise shared with CPUC earlier this week, between January and mid-July of 2023, Cruise AVs temporarily malfunctioned or shut down 177 times and required recovery, 26 of which such incidents occurred with a passenger inside, while Waymo recorded 58 such events in a similar time frame.

Meanwhile, according to the San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency (SFMTA), between April 2022 and April 2023, Cruise and Waymo vehicles have been involved in over 300 incidents of irregular driving including unexpected stops and collisions, while the San Francisco Fire Department says AVs have interfered 55 times in their work in 2023.

Last year, Cruise lost contact with its entire fleet for 20 minutes according to internal documentation viewed by WIRED, and an anonymous employee warned California regulators that year the company loses touch with its vehicles “with regularity.”

(The company said at the time Cruise cabs have “fallback” systems directing them to turn on their hazard lights and pull over in the face of such problems.)

Since being rolled out in San Francisco, robotaxis have killed a dog, caused a mile-long traffic jam during rush hour, blocked a traffic lane as officials responded to a shooting, and driven over fire hoses.

Jeffrey Tumlin, San Francisco’s director of transportation, has called the rollout of robotaxis a “race to the bottom,” arguing Cruise and Waymo weren’t yet definitive transit solutions, and instead had only “met the requirements for a learner’s permit.”

"The biggest concern is that someone is going to get really severely injured or killed because we cannot properly respond to an incident," San Francisco fire chief Jeanine Nicholson said in June. "Or if they can get in the way at an incident. We’ve really gotten lucky so far, but it’s only a matter of time before something really, really catastrophic happens."

“We have 160,000 calls a year. We don’t have the time to personally take care of a car that’s in the way when we’re on the way to an emergency,” she added.

Others worry the AV technology will cause another shock to workers in the city, displacing more transit jobs that were already turned upside-down or eliminated with the arrival of Uber and Lyft.

“We’re already seeing it,” Jose Gazo, an Uber driver, told The San Francisco Standard in July. “With business going like this, we’re going to go homeless.”

Not that taxis were a particularly worker-friendly technology in San Francisco, either. In 2010, the city began auctioning off driver medallions for $250,000 a piece. Declining taxi revenues, combined with a sky high cost of living, has left many San Francisco taxi drivers barely making survival wages in order to pay off debts on their cabs, even as the future of this investment looks increasingly doubtful.

The autonomous vehicle companies insist that human drivers are the real risk. Car crashes are a leading cause of death in the US, according to the CDC, and Cruise and Waymo point to the fact that their AVs haven’t been involved in a single fatal accident in San Francisco. (Such deaths have occured in the US, though; an Uber self-driving vehicle with a backup driver was involved in a 2018 accident in Arizona that killed a pedestrian.)

San Francisco is seen as a major proving ground before autonomous vehicles become mainstream
(Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

“Autonomous vehicles don’t get drunk or drowsy. They don’t text at the wheel,” Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana wrote in a July column in the San Francisco Chronicle. “We want our vehicles to improve road safety and to contribute to the city’s economic recovery and its Vision Zero goal of no street fatalities.”

However, unlike their fleshy, distractable human cousins, autonomous drivers (and thus their corporate owners) cannot be cited by police for common moving violations like reckless driving or speeding.

“The data to date indicates the Waymo Driver is reducing traffic injuries and fatalities in the places where we operate,” the company told The Independent in a statement. “In particular, in a million miles of fully autonomous operations, we had no collisions involving pedestrians or cyclists, and every vehicle-to-vehicle collision involved rule violations or dangerous behavior on the part of the human drivers.”

“2022 was the worst year for traffic deaths in San Francisco in nearly a decade,” it added. “Waymo’s mission is to improve road safety and mobility for everyone.”

ome city officials, meanwhile, say the companies are attempting to sell a safety record that hasn’t been fully open to public scrutiny, with the companies allegedly declining to share full data or giving city officials redacted reports.

“Given that we do not have actual data, what we have is information from reports that have been made by members of the public, by city employees, by firefighters, by transit operators,” Julia Friedlander, senior manager of automated driving policy at the SFMTA, said at a Monday CPUC meeting. “And what we have seen is that things are not getting better. The monthly rate of incidents has been growing significantly over the course of 2023. You’ll see that June was the month with the highest number of incidents of all kinds.”

The companies also argue AVs are a green solution. Cruise wrote in a 2022 blog post that “of the nearly 900,000 autonomous miles Cruise drove in 2021, not one added to CO2 emissions, and all were powered by 100% renewable energy.”

Some, however, are sceptical of this claim, noting that any transit method that encourages individual car use over low-cost, mass public transit is inherently inferior.

“This just adds more cars onto the road. It diverts our attention and financial investment and even legislative action to invest in public transit. It puts more cars on the road,” the Safe Street Rebel activist told The Independent.

“We’re big fans of technology that actually benefits people,” she added. “Trying to graft unreliable technology onto a wasteful, dangerous, inefficient mode of transport is hardly looking to the future.”

‘San Francisco will end up like Detroit’: Why Elon Musk and tech CEOs are fighting lawsuit on homeless crisis


Litigation centers on definition of who counts as ‘involuntarily homeless,’ Josh Marcus reports

3 days ago

Residents and business leaders opposed to a federal judge's December order halting encampment sweeps rally before an appellate court hearing in San Francisco, Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2023
(Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

Last year, before his headline-dominating acquisition of Twitter, Elon Musk confessed to being in a state of something like homelessness, though that term doesn’t quite feel right for someone now worth more than $257bn.

“I don’t even own a place right now, I’m literally staying at friends’ places,” he said at the time. “If I travel to the Bay Area, which is where most of Tesla’s engineering is, I basically rotate through friends’ spare bedrooms.”

Ninth Circuit Court considering San Francisco's homeless crisis

Even though Mr Musk very publicly moved to Texas a few years ago, he still frequently, albeit sometimes inaccurately, weighs in on the state of San Francisco and its well-documented public safety issues.


Over the weekend, he made perhaps his biggest gesture yet, threatening to go to “war” with the “snakes” supporting a lawsuit challenging San Francisco’s homelessness policies.

“They want war? Let’s give it to them,” Mr Musk wrote on X. “We cannot let these snakes win or San Francisco will end up like Detroit.”

The “snakes” in question? The global law firm Latham & Watkins, LLP, which has been assisting a coalition of housing advocacy groups, as well as the ACLU of Northern California, who are suing San Francisco, alleging the city is conducting sweeps of unhoused people without offering them adequate shelter.

Mr Musk, one of San Francisco’s most high-profile corporate tenants, floated the idea of asking his companies to cease working with the firm and encouraging other CEOs to do the same.

The Independent has contacted Latham for comment.

He’s not alone in siding with the city against the groups.

Garry Tan, a prominent earlier investor in startups like Instacart and Coinbase, who now leads Silicon Valley’s prestigious Y Combinator startup incubator, has called the lawsuit “madness” and a sign of “vast corruption” in San Francisco in social media posts of his own.

The lawsuit is more than just fodder for pontificating tech elites online, though.

It could change the way the city interacts with its estimated population of nearly 8,000 unhoused people.

On any given night, San Francisco homeless shelters can have a waiting list of hundreds of people. As of Wednesday morning, 466 were waiting for a spot. And even more people may be staying on the street.

City leaders like DEMOCRATIC mayor London Breed argue they need the power to conduct homeless encampment sweeps
(Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

The city’s most recent “point-in-time” count showed that more than half of the 7,754 homeless people counted in 2022 were unsheltered.


In September, a group of advocacy organisations called the Coalition on Homelessness sued the city, alleging its homelessness sweeps and other enforcement actions were violating the Martin v Boise ruling, a federal Ninth Circuit appeals decision that declared it illegal to penalise homeless people on government property without offering them adequate shelter.

In December, a judge issued a temporary injunction, halting encampment sweeps, prompting outrage from city officials, who appealed. The case is now before the Ninth Circuit.

The lawsuit has exposed the fractious nature of housing politics in California, where different sides can have vastly different visions of what thoughtful, progressive policy looks like.

City leaders and their supporters argue that the city should be allowed to continue to conduct sweeps because shelters often do have vacancies and some unhoused people refuse shelter offers entirely.

Tech leaders like Elon Mus have railed against advocates seeking to pause homeless sweeps
(PA Archive)

California governor Gavin Newom has previously slammed the injunction as “preposterous” and “inhumane.”

He celebrated Mr Musk for calling attention to a “key issue” with his boycott threat.

“California has made record investments — $15.3[bn],” the governor wrote on X. “But federal courts block local efforts to clear street encampments — even when housing and services are offered. Courts must also be held accountable. Enough is enough.”

The mayor of San Francisco has gone even further, claiming the Coalition on Homelessness has held the city “hostage” for decades during a round of recent protests in front of the Ninth Circuit.

City Attorney David Chiu has alleged that the advocacy coalition won’t stick by comments it made in court seeming to exempt those who refuse shelter from the injunction’s pause on sweeps.

“It is unfortunate and telling that Plaintiffs are unwilling to confirm in writing what they told the Court,” he said in a Tuesday filing. “It does not make sense that a person who rejects a shelter offer or has a shelter bed but chooses to maintain a tent on the street should be considered ‘involuntarily homeless.’”

However, advocates argue that the city shelter system is not adequate to house the numerous people on San Francisco streets each night, so further sweeps amount to inhumane treatment.

“[The City] insists on a charade that the City makes valid shelter ‘offers’ to unhoused individuals when the entire shelter system is at capacity, 400 individuals are waiting patiently on a waitlist to shelter to no avail, and the City itself doesn’t know if any shelter will become available on a given day when it continues to threaten the enforcement of laws enjoined by the district court’s injunction,” Zal Shroff, an attorney representing the Coalition on Homelessness, recently told CBS News Bay Area. “We should expect better from our political leaders. San Francisco deserves better.”

A trial over the future of the injunction could take place in April 2024.

 

Tiny ethnic Ta’ang army is a bellwether for opposition fight against Myanmar junta

Opposition gains could see the Brotherhood Alliance bandwagon to secure a better future negotiating position.

A commentary by Zachary Abuza
2023.08.29

Members of ethnic rebel group Ta'ang National Liberation Army train at their camp in the forest in Myanmar's northern Shan state, March 8, 2023.

 Credit: AFP

In Myanmar’s complex battle space, Shan state is a particularly fluid patchwork of people’s defense forces, ethnic resistance organizations, and criminal gangs, all with varying loyalty to the military junta or the opposition National Unity Government.

The Shan-based Brotherhood Alliance is made of three ethnic armies that are publicly supportive of the goal of the  National Unity Government (NUG) of establishing a federal democracy. They provide tacit support and training for opposition People’s Defense Force (PDF) militias, but they fight mostly in self-defense.

The Brotherhood Alliance includes the Arakan Army (AA),  the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), also known as the Kokang army. Shan state shares borders with key regional players China and Thailand.

The Arakan Army, the largest of three, gets most of the attention in its fight for a homeland in Rakhine state in Myanmar's far west. When fighting briefly resumed in late-2022, it was seen as a front that could break the 30-month-old military junta’s back. 

But the TNLA, though a small organization, is an important bellwether of how the war could evolve.  

There’ve been five major clashes between the military junta and the TNLA since December. RFA reporting has described almost daily encounters in the past two months.  

A Ta’ang National Liberation Army soldier sets fire to poppy plants during the destruction of an opium field in Mantong township, in Shan state, Myanmar, in 2014. Credit: Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters

The TNLA is the armed wing of the Palaung State Liberation Front, which represents the Ta’ang, an ethnic minority group of half a million people found in Shan state, northern Thailand and China's Yunnan Province. 

Early Ta’ang militias picked up arms in 1963, but reached a ceasefire in 1991, and surrendered their arms in 2005. Out of the ashes emerged the TNLA and its political arm, supported by the Kachin Independence Army (KIA). 

The military’s 2008 constitution established a small Palaung Special Administered Zone encompassing two townships in northern Shan State, though it was autonomous in name only. The TNLA was not a signatory to the 2015 Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement, but announced a unilateral ceasefire in 2018, though resumed fighting in 2019 when fighting broke out between the government and the Arakan Army in Rakhine state.  

Three things make the TNLA distinct. 

First, although it only has 7,000-10,000 men under arms, the TNLA is arguably the most cohesive ethnic resistance organization. They are well armed and militarily competent. 

Second, they take a clear anti-narcotics position, otherwise unheard of in Shan state, which is the epicenter of regional synthetic drug production. The TNLA runs check points, seizes and publicly incinerates illicit narcotics, destroys opium fields. These actions anger the military, their border guard forces, and pro-junta ethnic armies – all of whom profit from the drug trade.

Third, the TNLA understands that autonomy is contingent on the establishment of a genuine federal system in multiethnic Myanmar, so they are staunch advocates for national political reform. 

The Impact of the coup

Following the Feb. 1, 2021 coup d’etat, the TNLA suspended their ceasefire and voiced support for the NUG, but they did not formally ally with the main opposition. In March 2021, the Brotherhood Alliance threatened the junta that they would join the NUG if the military did not cease their attacks on the three members.

The TNLA has been giving tacit support to the NUG in four ways. 

First, it expelled the pro-junta Shan State Restoration Council from northern Shan State by late 2021.

Second, it banned the sale of products from military-owned companies – including Myanmar Beer, Red Ruby and Premium Gold Cigarettes – within its territory.

Third, the TNLA welcomed Burmese opposition figures into its territory, and once the NUG announced its “People’s War” in September 2022, began training and equipping local PDF militias.

Fourth, in January, TNLA Chairman Lieutenant-General Tar Aik Bong rejected the military’s attempt to hold elections as a political off-ramp. 

"Our revolutionary forces have an opportunity to prevent this election. Only by using this opportunity can we free future generations from the enslavement of the military,” he declared.

Clashes with military government forces erupted in January 2022, but died down. 

In December 2022, however, the military increased operations in Shan state to control major roads, leading to clashes with the TNLA and a sustained aerial campaign. There were some 30 air strikes in a single week after TNLA forces surrounded several military units. The military, unconvincingly, chalked this up to a “misunderstanding”. 

Ta'ang National Liberation Army soldiers take target practice at their base camp in the forest in Myanmar's northern Shan state, March 8, 2023. Credit: AFP

Violence has escalated in 2023. 

After several snubbed invitations from the junta, on June 1, the Brotherhood Alliance met with a junta delegation, at the prodding of China. 

After hedging its bets, China has doubled down on its support of the junta, and has been actively pressing the Northern Alliance to stop their active support for the NUG and cease all offensive operations.

The talks quickly broke down, and the Brotherhood Alliance rejected the junta’s calls to support proposed “elections.”

Fighting between the military and the TNLA intensified in July as the junta tried to retake the road outside of Muse, an important border crossing with China, where the TNLA has been inspecting vehicles for illicit narcotics.

Worth watching

While the junta controls the China border city Muse, it has tenuous control of the surrounding countryside. The military regime has artillery positions in Muse, which they use to target TNLA positions, though more often killing innocent civilians.

Clashes continued through August. Notably in one ambush of an army supply convoy NUG PDFs were fighting alongside the TNLA. The military has retaliated with air attacks.

The online newspaper Irrawaddy quoted a TNLA officer as saying that it had more than a dozen clashes with the junta in August, with tensions remaining high in two northern Shan townships.

"There were 13 clashes in August and all because of massive advances by the military into our territory,” Lieutenant Colonel Tar Aik Kyaw from the TNLA told the independent daily.

So why does the TNLA matter?

First, should the violence escalate, the TNLA could publicly embrace the NUG and begin coordinated offensive operations. At this point, the military junta fights the TNLA at its choosing, but that could change. 

Ta'ang National Liberation Army troops ride on a truck near Namhsan township in Myanmar's northern Shan state, March 9, 2023. Credit: AFP

If the NUG continues to make gains this year, the Brotherhood Alliance could bandwagon in order to secure a better negotiating position for itself over the establishment of a federal system.

Second, the junta has been steadily losing control over its border regions. This was most evident with the recent defection of its Border Guard Forces in Kayah state. In addition to the TNLA, the KIA has stepped up their attempts to control the Lashio-Muse Highway. The regime’s forces in the border are isolated and dependent on overland trucks or helicopters for resupply. 

The regime is increasingly isolated by international sanctions and even more dependent on non-dollar-denominated trade with China.

Third, while the Northern Alliance may have shrugged off Chinese pressure to reach a ceasefire with the junta, the TNLA is also an important bellwether for how the EROs think about their relationship with the governments in Beijing and the Yunnan capital Kunming.

In January, the Brotherhood Alliance issued a statement in which they pledged to protect Chinese investments - including their trade zone in Muse. This was reiterated in July. 

Likewise, the TNLA pledged to cooperate in the combatting of human trafficking and other “illegal activities”, as China takes the threat of transnational criminal enterprises operating out of Myanmar more seriously.

Zachary Abuza is a professor at the National War College in Washington and an adjunct at Georgetown University. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of the U.S. Department of Defense, the National War College, Georgetown University or Radio Free Asia.

 

China jails economics professor who highlighted government’s personnel costs

Yang Shaozheng's sentence comes amid allegations of torture from his legal defense team.

By Gu Ting for RFA Mandarin
2023.08.31

Former Guizhou University professor Yang Shaozheng was convicted by Chinese authorities of "incitement to subvert state power" in a closed-door trial in July.

A Chinese court on Thursday handed down a four-and-a-half-year jail term to an outspoken economics professor who had estimated the high personnel costs of the Chinese government, finding him guilty of “incitement to subvert state power,” according to rights website.

The Guiyang Intermediate People's Court handed down the sentence to former Guizhou University professor Yang Shaozheng in a trial behind closed doors on July 29, a post on the Weiquanwang rights website said.

"Yang Shaozheng expressed dissatisfaction with the judgment in court and filed an appeal," the group said. "The reason for the appeal was that this was an illegal trial."

Yang's appeal argued that members of the Chinese Communist Party had presided over the case from start to finish, including the investigation, the prosecution and the trial itself.

"The actions he was charged with fell under freedom of speech and expression, and to criminalize a citizen for exercising those rights was a violation of the constitutional right to freedom of expression," the report paraphrased Yang's appeal as saying.

A key member of Yang's defense team, Zhang Lei, declined to comment when contacted by Radio Free Asia, indicating that he was under a lot of pressure from the authorities, while repeated calls to another member of his defense team rang unanswered on Thursday.

Cost to Chinese taxpayers

Yang, 53, lost his job at Guizhou University’s Institute of Economics in November 2017, on the orders of someone "higher up" the government hierarchy, and was subsequently investigated by police amid a purge of outspoken academics and the adoption of President Xi Jinping's personal brand of ideology across higher education.

Hunan-based dissident Chen Siming said an article in which Yang calculated that party and government personnel cost the Chinese taxpayer an estimated 20 trillion yuan (US$2.75 trillion) annually was likely the trigger for his arrest.

"These questions [he was asking] hit home," Chen said in an interview last month. "He was later expelled from Guizhou University, and then secretly arrested. During this period, lawyers and family members weren't allowed to meet with him." 

Yang spent some time on the run in 2019 after being shackled to a chair and interrogated by state security police for eight hours, around the 30th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.

Just before that stint in detention, Yang had criticized a new wave of ideological training being launched in China's colleges and universities.

He was arrested in secret in May 2021 and placed under incommunicado detention for six months on suspicion of "incitement to subvert state power," before being formally arrested and prosecuted. He is currently being held in the Guiyang No. 1 Detention Center.

His lawyers filed an administrative complaint with the Guizhou provincial state prosecutor on March 3, alleging that state security police were trying to force a "confession" from Yang through torture, which caused him to lose consciousness several times and lose some 25 kilograms (55 pounds) in weight.

The complaint said the abuse took place during the six months he was held under "residential surveillance at a designated location," a type of incommunicado detention frequently used to target critics of the ruling Chinese Communist Party in "national security" cases.

A Guizhou-based lecturer who gave only the surname Yu said Yang, whom she counts as a friend, is a "rare" person in today's China.

"I think Yang Shaozheng knows very well what he was bringing down on his own head when he spoke out like that, but he did it anyway," Yu told Radio Free Asia in a recent interview. "He is a politically brave person, which is a rare thing in our society."

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

 

Cambodia’s king calls on lawmakers, government to resolve their differences

But analysts and opposition figures doubt they will heed his advice.

By RFA Khmer
2023.08.21

Cambodia’s King Norodom Sihamoni (C) leaves the National Assembly building in Phnom Penh after the opening ceremony of the parliament, Aug. 21, 2023.

 Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP

In an opening speech to Cambodia’s newly elected parliament on Monday, King Norodom Sihamoni called on lawmakers and the government to reconcile their deep divisions, though political commentators and opposition officials say the effort will amount to naught.

The July 23 elections, won by the ruling Cambodian People’s Party in a landslide, have been widely criticized by Western governments and opposition activists within the country because authorities kept the main opposition Candlelight Party from participating on a technicality.

Three days after the election, Prime Minister Hun Sen – who has ruled the country since 1985 – announced he would step down and hand power to his eldest son, army chief Hun Manet. 

The king, who has served as the head of the country’s constitutional monarchy since October 2004, issued a royal message calling on members of the National Assembly and the government to forge national reconciliation and adhere to the four Brahmanical principles of Buddhism.

Norodom Sihamoni said he expected the new government to win the trust of the National Assembly to develop and strengthen the comprehensive social protection system for Cambodian citizens.

A high degree of unity and solidarity would ensure the strong existence of national identity, promote socioeconomic development and boost morality for the harmony of society, the king said. 

“On this great occasion, I wish the 7th National Assembly to run smoothly and carry out its role with a responsible conscience in order to achieve new successes for the common good of the motherland,” the king told the 125 lawmakers, all of whom except five were from the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, or CCP. The others were from Funcinpec led by Prince Norodom Chakravuth, the king’s nephew.

Hun Sen, former National Assembly President Heng Samrin, and Interior Minister Sar Kheng also were in attendance. 

‘Fake’ election 

Political analysts and opposition officials said the king’s speech reflected his view that the country’s political divisions would harm the nation, though the situation would not likely change.

Um Sam An, a senior official from the banned Cambodia National Rescue Party, or CNRP, said the king’s remarks were intended to guide the new government and lawmakers back onto a democratic path for the benefit of society following what he called “fake” elections. 

The CNRP official also said that the king was likely dissatisfied with the leadership of the previous one-party government, which often persecuted dissidents and opposition groups.

“He warned the deputies to be kind and treat the people well,” Um Sam An said, adding that the political crisis in Cambodia has gotten worse with the holding of “fake” elections this year and in 2018.

“So, he understands that democracy and respect for human rights will only get worse in Cambodia,” said Um Sam An.

Hun Sen dissolved the opposition CNRP in 2017 and later prevented the party’s leader, Sam Rainsy, from returning to Cambodia to stand trial on charges that rights groups said were politically motivated.

Political commentator Kim Sok condemned the new government, saying it was born of the fraudulent elections. 

“This illegitimate government and parliament face a huge reaction from the international community, the reaction of the people who will protest around the world,” he said. “And in the face of both economic and social crises, poverty and unemployment will occur. All these crises weaken our country.”

Knowing these prospects, the king has called for national unity, and that is all his authority allows him to do, Kim Sok added.

CCP spokesman Sok Eysan told Radio Free Asia that the king's statement was a general message to people from all walks of life, and not a reference to the new government or the National Assembly. He also said that national unity depended on the attitude of the opposition. 

Patrick Murphy, the U.S. ambassador to Cambodia, who attended the opening of the National Assembly, sent a positive message to the newly elected lawmakers.

“As the new gov’t. begins its tenure, it can restore multi-party democracy, end political convictions, and allow independent media to reopen & function without interference, he tweeted.

Translated by Sokry Sum for RFA Khmer. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.